Backseat tragedy: How often are kids left in hot cars?

Has our stressful lifestyle lead to this obscured way of 'forgetting' our children while they are in our own vehicles '???'...not that England would have this problem {due to the lower heat indicia's there} but we {in America} have such weather extremes and the global warming is only making it worse --- our fatalities are just steadily increasing.
316 deaths from 1998 - 2013 with another 9 - 2014, 24 - 2015 and 3 - 2016

Backseat tragedy: How often are kids left in hot cars?
By HLN Staff Updated 11:39 AM EDT,  Mon July 7, 2014
The hottest months on the calendar are upon us and with them, potentially the deadliest time of year for children accidentally left in the backseats of cars.
Already in 2014, there have been at least 9 instances of young children suffering heat-related deaths after a parent or caregiver forgot to take them out of their vehicle. That number does not include 22-month-old Cooper Harris, whose father, Justin, is currently under investigation regarding whether Cooper's death last week near Atlanta, Georgia, was an accident or intentional. Justin Harris has been charged with felony murder and cruelty to children.
With the sweltering summer months comes an increase in these terrible stories, and if it seems like we're hearing about a new one almost every week, there's good reason: Since 1998, an average of almost 20 children every year have died after being forgotten about in the car. Those tragedies are heavily concentrated in June, July and August, according to researchand tracking conducted by Jan Null in the Department of Earth and Climate Sciences at San Francisco State University. She has found that at least 316 children in the United States have died under those circumstances from 1998 to 2013.
The most common cause of death in these cases is heat stroke, which begins to occur when body temperature reaches 104 degrees Fahrenheit. In testing conducted by Null and her colleagues and published in the journal, Pediatrics, a car in 84-degree weather reached an interior temperature of 110 degrees in about 18 minutes. In 88-degree weather, the car reached 110 in about 14 minutes.
Their research also found that cracking a window had little effect on the car's temperature.
The nonprofit organization Kids and Cars, which describes its mission as being "dedicated to preventing injuries and death to children in or around motor vehicles," explains on its website that, "A child’s body temperature rises 3‐5 times faster than an adult’s. Even with the windows partially down, the temperature inside a parked car can reach 125 degrees in just minutes."
The tracking conducted by San Francisco State's Null includes not only deaths where a child was forgotten by their caregiver, but also fatal instances of unattended children accidentally locking themselves in a car, cases where a child was intentionally left in a vehicle and situations where the conditions were unknown. Accounting for all circumstances, their combing of media reports found a total of 606 "child vehicular heat stroke deaths" between 1998 and 2013.
Texas led the nation during a similar period, from 1998-2012, with 86 children dying in cars due to hyperthermia, which is when the body becomes dangerously overheated. Heat stroke is the most severe form of hyperthermia.
Adjusting for population, Arkansas had the highest rate of such deaths during that time, with 24.9 deaths per 1 million people younger than 18 years old. It was followed by other states with brutal summer temperatures, beginning with Nevada (24.4), Arizona (20.0), Louisiana and Florida (both 19.1).
Only four states -- Vermont, New Hampshire, Wyoming and Alaska -- don't have a recorded instance of child vehicular heat stroke death since 1998 and such heartbreaking tragedies have occurred in 11 of 12 months during that time.
That set of information appears to confirm in numbers what Dr. David Diamond, a scientist who often consults on these cases, told Parenting magazine: "Given the right scenario," he said, "I would say this can happen to anyone." 
http://www.hlntv.com/article/2014/06/24/children-hot-cars-deaths-how-often

And this is the leading for the most recent trial bases on a parent leaving his own child in a hot car while he went into work!

Day 6: Justin Ross Harris trial, jury selection gets personal

Posted: Apr 18, 2016 4:03 PM CDT
COBB COUNTY, GA (CBS46) -
The Justin Ross Harris hot car death trial is now in it's second week. Authorities are sifting through potential jurors, asking them some rather personal questions.

[*]Harris is accused of leaving his 22-month old son Cooper in a hot car to die in June of 2014. Defense attorney Maddox Kilgore tried to lighten to mood with the first person brought in for questioning Monday. "You are the first candidate of the day, so you haven't had a lot of time to sit back in that room getting extra, extra nervous about being out here," Kilgore said with a chuckle.
Lawyers for both sides got to ask questions they think will be important. Prosecutor Chuck Boring wanted to know more about whether the married other of a 3-year-old gets her news.
"You're a fan of gossip websites," Boring asked. "Which type what gossip websites?" On her questionnaire, the woman had answered that she had an opinion in the case, leaning toward guilty.
The potential juror answered, "I think generally I'm a very fair person. As a parent of a young child I just really struggle to how something like this could happen."
Another juror questioned, a single father with two children, told the attorneys he can tell when someone is lying simply by looking at them.
"You wrote the term uncanny ability to detect lies. Those are the words you used. What did you mean by that?" Prosecuting attorney Jesse Evans asked.
The man answered, "Usually when I look into someone's eyes I can tell if they are being untruthful."
Lawyers also asked the man about his use of internet pornography, which the man acknowledged in a questionnaire. The man, who is single, said his porn use had not affected any of his relationships.
Those two were among the 16 qualified people selected so far for the potential jury pool.
Read more: http://www.cbs46.com/story/31754930/day-6-justin-ross-harris-trial#ixzz46Mx1gWAb 

[*]

At least your jurors are interviewed before they are let loose in the court.
Once a juror has been picked to serve from the electoral roll, as long as they meet the requirements (between a certain age, not on bail or served time in prison recently etc ) they are not further assessed for suitability.

We do have cases here where animals, usually dogs have died from heat stroke after being left in cars.
Your figures are alarming.
How can people be so stupid?

I cannot remember seeing a youngster left in a HOT car.

We saw one little girl locked in a car in Spain. We knocked on nearby doors but no one knew who the car belonged to. The little girl was asleep but we got scared in case she was unconscious...just as we were about to try to break in the dad came back and was most put out. He didn't speak English (or cracked on he didn't) The fool had left the car parked in full sun.

Have people not heard the warnings and the horror stories about these tragedies, that have been circulating for YEARS?? How can you be so stupid as to leave a vulnerable living thing in the car alone?

Bet these people wouldn't leave their precious phones in the car.

This is one of the most frustrating issues for me. Every year when it gets warm, we start publishing warnings about leaving people or pets in cars ... and every year, somebody still does it and it results in tragedy.

I'm hoping we actually are preventing more of them from happening. But you have to wonder about someone who hasn't heard this advice -- must live under rocks.

It never ceases to amaze me that people are often far more reckless with their children than their belongings.

I will share this one horrifying true life story that is one of 'THOSE' statistics from 1989:
High school classmate became a RN - flight nurse on Med-a-Vac {helicopter rescue unit}, met and married her husband who was a pilot for the same company but different rescue units!  She was leaving for her early am morning shift when she got coded out **high priority** she had to leave ASAP...meanwhile her husbands pager went off and he was coded out for his unit as well, both parents rushing through their home and routine to get out the door and on certain days he dropped the 8 month old baby off to daycare since she had early morning run for her shift schedule.  They both drove identical 4 wheel drive vehicles with matching car seats affixed to the interior rear seats.  Her husband was yelling something to her as she was flying out the door and she didn't catch what he'd said but her pager was going nuts.  They both lived 25 minutes from the hospital and helipad...she was paged to the hospital and he was paged to flight deck at the helipad. 
There had been a avalanche with a 5 car pile up on a mountain road outside of Denver --- all hands report STAT.  It wasn't until around noon when my RN friend was heading out to her Subaru to go home that she opened the drivers door to a stench so horrific --- she hit the unlock button and pulled open the back door to find her 8 month old baby boy DOA /swollen beyond recognition and the parking lot soon filled up with fellow medical emergency staff/police officers and someone trying to locate her husband.
Her husband had bundled up the baby and placed him into her Subaru thinking she'd heard him shout out to her to drop the baby off at the emergency ward - in house hospital daycare on her way in to work.
The sun beating down onto where the baby was seated {even behind those dark tinted windows} made the temperatures that day - in that parking lot reach well over 100º inside and he was left {unknowingly} from 5 - noon buckled in place.
Lots of things went wrong that morning - those high backed Subaru seats make it impossible to see the baby carseat in the back - the baby was asleep - the RN mother wasn't aware she had 'her baby on board' - both parents work high stress/emergency type jobs and that happened. 
The FBI was involved - FBI contacted many of her classmates for personal references about: 'how was she as a mother/wife/friend'...and in general what did we think???  Even though neither one of them were officially charged, they both had to be registered on the CHILD PROTECTIVE REGISTER as OFFENDERS - Loss of Life to an INFANT.  They both were denied their official nursing certifications for the state of Colorado. 

I've just given you a brief summary of the utter horror that those two adults went through; and it was a accident - neither one did it to the other on purpose - but their little boy DIED.  And so many of my fellow classmates were HARSH & CRUEL about this accident and the blame game was fierce! 
Sometimes in our daily lives we get into that ZONE and we allow our work responsibility to drive us to be better/move faster/do more for our employer then we have time & energy left for our important people = children. 

I can't imagine having to bury a baby - can't imagine having to bury a baby that died right in my vehicle - seated & asleep right behind me; can't wrap my mind around how that would break my mind and will to live. 
But the flip side of that old horror story is the lousy example of the farther on trial for leaving his own son that he placed in the rear seat - after sharing breakfast with him before he walked into work and left him out there do die~~~